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lesson

verbnounverbcommon in dialogue

  • //ˈlɛs.ən//
  • /[ˈlɛs.n̩]/

A section of learning or teaching into which a wider learning content is divided.

verb

  1. 1

    archaicTo instruct to teach.

    And you, my sister—you, who lesson me on endurance, your cheek is pale, and your step languid; even with you, how much has life lost its interest!

Etymology

From Middle English lessoun, from Old French leçon, from Latin lēctiō, lēctiōnem (“a reading”), from legō (“to read; to gather”). Doublet of lection.

noun

  1. 1

    A section of learning or teaching into which a wider learning content is divided.

    In our school a typical working week consists of around twenty lessons and ten hours of related laboratory work.

  2. 2

    A learning task assigned to a student; homework.

  3. 3

    Something learned or to be learned.

    Nature has many lessons to teach to us.

  4. 4

    Something that serves as a warning or encouragement.

    I hope this accident taught you a lesson!

    The accident was a good lesson to me.

  5. 5

    A section of the Bible or other religious text read as part of a divine service.

    Here endeth the first lesson.

  6. 6

    A severe lecture; reproof; rebuke; warning.

    She would give her a lesson for walking so late.

    The humor of my proposition appealed more strongly to Miss Trevor than I had looked for, and from that time forward she became her old self again;[…]. Now she had come to look upon the matter in its true proportions, and her anticipation of a possible chance of teaching him a lesson was a pleasure to behold.

  7. 7

    An exercise; a composition serving an educational purpose; a study.

verb

  1. 1

    To give a lesson to; to teach.

    her owne daughter Pleasure, to whom shee Made her companion, and her lessoned In all the lore of loue, and goodly womanhead.

    To rest the weary, and to soothe the sad, Doth lesson happier men, and shame at least the bad.

Forms

plural
lessons
past tense
lessoned
past participle
lessoned
present participle
lessoning
third person singular
lessons
The neighbouring pagesAlphabetical order follows the rules of the language, not byte values: an accent decides only between two otherwise identical words, and Spanish files Ñ as a letter of its own.

Lexical content from Wiktionary, under CC BY-SA 4.0 · Source entry · Data version 2026-08-23

Rank among the words of the OpenSubtitles 2018 corpus — film and television subtitles, so spoken rather than written usage (CC BY-SA 3.0).